Bill Petruzzo , Jan 27, 2012; 04:20 p.m.
For nearly a week now I've been trying to find a really solid system for us to keep track of customer interactions, contracts, sessions, weddings, etc. So far I've tried Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and Zoho CRM. All of these were bloated, clearly being designed for bigger businesses with very different kinds of sales. Customization was plausible, but not without breaking the bank. Salesforce and Sugar both have erroneous packages that clearly aren't customer focused. Zoho, while bloated, was also surprisingly un-customizable, and didn't have any integration for email marketing. Deal breaker.
Finally, I also tried Highrise. It was probably a little closer to what we need, but went too far in the other direction. It offered virtually NO customizations, and this time was TOO simple.
So now I'm at my wits end. The lines are blurring between the products and research fatigue is setting in. I'm hoping someone here can recommend a CRM system that works really well for us photographers, and is priced reasonably for what we're asking it to do.
Any ideas?
Charles Webster 
, Jan 30, 2012; 04:06 p.m.
I struggled with this a couple of years ago when I first turned pro. I didn't find a CRM that met my needs and didn't cost more than I could justify.
I chose Insight Contact Manager from Welborn Software (http://welbornsoftware.com/pages/icmfeat.htm) because it had most of the features I wanted.
It's not a CRM, and it's not very customizable, but it's relatively cheap and has good support from the author. It will manage email and snail mail marketing, it can track contact status (i.e., when/how you contacted them last), I believe it has a built-in mail-merge capability, and some other features I don't use. It does not have customizable data entry forms, and it's a PITA to change field names, but it works pretty well once you get accustomed to it.
My $0.02 worth
<Chas>
